New Jewellery Business - Need Site Traffic

terra_ferma

Have a look at the craftsforum, some members have jewellery websites, I've seen some really nice ones, they can give you some (inexpensive) ideas.

You may want to invest in a good website designer, money well worth investing if you want it to look professional (choose one recommended by someone you trust, and check their work beforehand, I've seen some horror stories).
It's not strictly necessary to pay someone to do it, if you have the time and patience to learn, but I agree that your website needs to be totally re-designed.

AliceJenkins

Why not try focusing on offline? online is so competitive, do some leaflets get word of mouth out and try and get publicity that way.

princess_tinks

AliceJenkins wrote: »

Why not try focusing on offline? online is so competitive, do some leaflets get word of mouth out and try and get publicity that way.

Thanks Alice, I am going to be doing this, my partner works at a school and I will be doing fayres there, and also looking into doing jewellery parties.

AliceJenkins

princess_tinks wrote: »

Thanks Alice, I am going to be doing this, my partner works at a school and I will be doing fayres there, and also looking into doing jewellery parties.

What market are you aiming at? what kind of jewellery are you selling?

Edit:

Sorry just saw the site!

steve1980

I see you've tried to change the website...it looks worse!

Take the site down, redesign it and then re-launch it.

princess_tinks

steve1980 wrote: »

I see you've tried to change the website...it looks worse!

Take the site down, redesign it and then re-launch it.

Seeing as you are some "expert" on designing websites maybe you could have offered some constructive advice rather than negative criticism. Or would I have to pay for that?

In the 3 months I have been up and running I have made 4 figures sums in sales between my website and ebay shop - not bad for a new business. £900 of which has been in December! I've even got myself a whole bunch of returning customers.

Happy Christmas Everyone

kernewek

Hi there.

Well done on what you have achieved so far. It is no mean feat to create a website on your own.

If you want to do a re-design I would try using dedicated shopping cart software. They really are not as hard to do as a lot of developers would have you believe. All you really need is to get your head around ftp and its fairly straight forward.

My advice would be to use Prestashop (free). I recently installed one for a friend and she's now happily managing and buliding a very professional looking website for very little outlay. There are other carts such as Magento but its down to personal preference.

Then download a copy of wamp server (also free) you can then install the shopping cart locally and play around, trying different skins (some are free, most are paid for!) adding products etc. When you're confident with it you can upload to a webhost and build your site for real. There are loads of guides and online help forums that can help but have a look at prestashop.co.uk where there is loads of info.

AliceJenkins

Well done on the sales

I don't think your websites great looking, but it's not always a bad thing.

Right now you look like you are a small business, a lot of people would sooner shop with a small, single person ran store, than a chain, corporate like site.

Just have the logo improved and the entire store would look 100x better.

You can get them done professionally and very cheaply on sites like Freelancer.com

princess_tinks

AliceJenkins wrote: »

Well done on the sales

I don't think your websites great looking, but it's not always a bad thing.

Right now you look like you are a small business, a lot of people would sooner shop with a small, single person ran store, than a chain, corporate like site.

Just have the logo improved and the entire store would look 100x better.

You can get them done professionally and very cheaply on sites like Freelancer.com

Thank you, I really don't know what way to turn with the design. I am using 123.reg and it's very limited on what I can do. I will give it a go though.

princess_tinks

kernewek wrote: »

Hi there.

Well done on what you have achieved so far. It is no mean feat to create a website on your own.

If you want to do a re-design I would try using dedicated shopping cart software. They really are not as hard to do as a lot of developers would have you believe. All you really need is to get your head around ftp and its fairly straight forward.

My advice would be to use Prestashop (free). I recently installed one for a friend and she's now happily managing and buliding a very professional looking website for very little outlay. There are other carts such as Magento but its down to personal preference.

Then download a copy of wamp server (also free) you can then install the shopping cart locally and play around, trying different skins (some are free, most are paid for!) adding products etc. When you're confident with it you can upload to a webhost and build your site for real. There are loads of guides and online help forums that can help but have a look at prestashop.co.uk where there is loads of info.

Thank you for your info re. prestashop, it looks pretty good. Unfortunately I am paid up with 123.reg until September 2012, but after that I will definitely look into it, obviously though, it sounds a lot more technical than 123.reg (where everything is basically set up), so I will need help with installing and uploading, etc.

But thank you very much, your advice has been very helpful.